Friday, November 08, 2013

Connecticut Progressives And The Tea Party Scapegoat

The Tea Party in Connecticut is likely to loom large in
future state-wide campaigns, even though Democrats in Connecticut would be hard
pressed to name any incumbent Tea Party members in the General Assembly. There
are no Tea Party incumbents in Connecticut’s left of center U.S. Congressional
delegation, all the members of which are Democrats, and Governor Dannel Malloy
may safely be ruled out as a Tea Party enthusiast.

“What was once the Republican Party,” Mr. Malloy said at the 65th Annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner “is now the Tea Party – this is a case were (sic)
the tail is literally wagging the dog. They don’t give a darn about our
economy, it’s quite clear that they would sink our economy for their own
political good.”

The brute fact is: There are no enemies on the left in
Connecticut politics, which is why the state over the past few decades has
moved steadily left of center. The same Democrats who find it politically expedient
to regard the Tea Party in Connecticut as a significant threat to their
dominance would be hard pressed, circa 2014, to point to any moderate Democrats
in leadership positions in the state’s General Assembly.

After Democrats had for the first time in more than 20 years
claimed the gubernatorial slot, leaders in the General Assembly worked
successfully to overthrow Connecticut’s death penalty law, wrote two budgets
without any Republican Party input, implemented the largest tax increase in the
state’s history, promoted a get-out-of-jail-early program that has let loose on
two communities early released felons who have committed murders with weapons
not yet banned by the General Assembly’s
progressive leaders, sanctioned gay marriage, refused in violation of
federal law to assist the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agency (ICE) in the apprehension of non-law abiding undocumented
workers, at least some of whom are working in the illegal drug industry. Such
are some of the many arrows in the progressive quiver.

The progressive bazooka is, of course, Obamacare, a baby
step on the way to a universal health care system. Wherever universal health
care systems have successfully challenged a private health care market, the
insurance market quickly adapts: It becomes a stripped down, boutique health
care provider supplying very expensive products to upper middle-class consumers.
Such is the case in England where the relevant government oversight agency recently
reported that one fourth of hospitals in the country were not providing
standard care. If the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S.
Congressional delegation sometimes worry that a considerably reduced insurance
industry will cause increased unemployment in what used to be called the
insurance capital of the world, they have successfully suppressed their misgivings.

Most members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation
have jauntily leapt over the progressive barricades: U.S. Senators Dick
Blumenthal and Chris Murphy proudly associate themselves with progressives. In
the U.S. House, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson, both of whom operate in
impregnable Democratic districts, are out-of-the-closet progressives, though
Mrs. DeLauro, if one pays attention to fashion conscious commentators, appears
to be more hip than Mr. Larson. U.S. Representatives Jim Himes and Joe Courtney
happily associate with progressives, though both are less conspicuously left because
they operate in swing districts.

Where have all the moderates gone?

Gone to graveyards, every one – both Democratic and Republican
moderates.

The rise of the Connecticut’s progressive movement coincides
with the near destruction of the old moderate regime, which coincides with a successful
effort, embraced by progressives, to refashion the Democratic Party apparatus
into a blunt progressive instrument with which to cudgel what used to be
considered the vital MODERATE center of politics in the Northeast.

It may be said of Connecticut Democrats “We are all
progressives now,” to vary a phrase attributed by Milton Friedman to former
President Richard Nixon, circa 1965, who is reputed to have said, “We are all
Keynesians now,” a signal on Nixon’s part that he was prepared to embrace more
interventionist policies. When Mr. Nixon took the United States off the gold
standard in 1971, he grandly proclaimed, “I am now a Keynesian in
economics."

In what Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, the first comprehensive
progressive, called “the arena,” it is important that the striver after great
deeds, the political enthusiast, the man “who spends himself in a worthy
cause,” should be seen struggling manfully against his equally energetic – but,
of course, seriously misguided – opponents.
In Connecticut, where the progressive victory is nearly complete, a
malicious non-existent opponent must be summoned from the misty depths.

For progressive Democrats in Connecticut, the Tea Party, a
mere ghost and goblin, is a political foil useful in drawing public attention
away from a current crisis largely of their own making. Such largely fictional
scapegoats allow artful dodgers to escape responsibility for their own socially
destructive programs. In an environment in which a media intent on afflicting
the comfortable and comforting the afflicted has been compromised by a comfortable business
association with the state’s comfortable reigning power, such scapegoating is both
tolerated and encouraged.

1 comment:

peter brush
said...

They don’t give a darn about our economy, it’s quite clear that they would sink our economy for their own political good.--------------This sort of invective would be offensive even if there were any evidence to support it. But, there is no evidence. The so-called Tea Party, of which I'm happy to call myself a member, doesn't have any but the most nebulous of existences, and what it stands for, if I interpret correctly, is a return to limited government (i.e., a government limited to the purposes set out in its Constitution). In a narrower sense it seeks fiscal restraint; less spending, taxing, and borrowing in the belief that both the State and Federal debts in themselves are disasters for our kids, and in the belief shared with Milton Friedman that government spending is in itself a drag on the economy. Governor Malloy is not the sharpest of bulbs in the drawer, nor the brightest of knives, but his bigoted invective has now become universal not just within the ranks of the gauche pols, but in the putative thinkers of the liberal establishment. Lawrence Summers is widely appreciated as both an intelligent person and a learned economist. He must know that markets are the most efficient means of allocating scarce resources, that Obamacare is essentially a bad idea, and yet he wants to blame its catastrophic outbreak on the malice of the political opposition. I'd be willing to bet that neither Malloy nor Summers has read The Federalist. Neither gives a fig about our history, people, or way of life. And, just judging by their actions, neither is too concerned about economic growth.God Bless the veterans.----http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lawrence-summers-immediate-lessons-from-health-care-reform/2013/11/10/5b5be00e-48c8-11e3-a196-3544a03c2351_story.html----Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax ... If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should keep your eye on is what government spends, and the real problem is to hold down government spending as a fraction of our income, and if you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.